…starts tomorrow. I’ll be in Ellsworth hanging it a good part of the day, I’m sure. i’ve been working all week getting paintings and collages ready to hang, and I’m about ready. It’s at the Hancock County Higher Education Center; come visit if you get a chance. The show runs from August 13-Sep 21, 2007.
Paint the Town
Yesterday I participated in The Farnsworth Art Museum’s fourth annual Paint the Town event, where artists get together and go out and paint scenes of Rockland, and then the paintings get auctioned off that evening. Bids weren’t very brisk last night, but the event probably made about $10,000 for the museum, and both the paintings I did sold.
Pics to follow:
Update on the new laptop
Well…
Hey, it shipped today.
It was supposed to ship out 5 days after being sent to manufacturing, but due to a surge in orders, it got delayed, and System 76 was nice enough to upgrade shipping to 2nd day express. Turns out that the big reason for the delay was that the CPU I ordered was out of stock from Intel, (this via email yesterday), so they upgraded my CPU, so that they could ship it out today. Wow,! I’d call that great service.
System specs:
Display: 15.4″ Widescreen WXGA (1280X800)
Graphics: Intel GMA X3100
Audio Output: Realtek ALC 268
Networking: 10/100/1000 (LAN), WiFi
Wireless: 802.11 abg
Expansion: Express Card
Ports: VGA, 4x USB 2.0, MIC-In, Headphone Out, FireWire 1394, S-Video
Battery: 6 Cell Lithium Ion
Battery Life: 3.5 hours
Dimensions: 14.20″ x 10.43″ x 1.74″ (WxDxH)
Weight: 5.9 lbs.
Operating System Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Linux
Processor: Core 2 Duo T7100 1.8 GHz 800 MHz FSB 2 MB L2
Memory: 1 GB – 2 x 512 MB DDR2 667 MHZ
Hard Drive: 80 GB 5400 RPM SATA
Optical Drive: CD-RW / DVD-RW
This baby ought to scream right along compared to my old laptop.
More book
Sent out for this book today from Lulu.com. It’s a benefit for Diabetes research, and looks like a good read, with 10 excellent authors contributing stories. (Including Cory Doctorow, Mike Resnick, Murr Lafferty, and Robert J Sawyer.)
Some of the greatest voices in speculative fiction join forces in this one-of-a-kind anthology to benefit the American Diabetes Association. Join Robert J. Sawyer, Mike Resnick, Cory Doctorow, and others as a cop-for-hire solves a murder aboard a space station…a Chicano science fiction writer takes mind-blowing (literally!) ride through the Singularity…a third-rate superhero with useless powers finds a place to belong…an antique collector learns that one alien’s junk is mankind’s treasure…a geologist discovers that pretending to be a god isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…a journalist learns how to fend off zombies using Linux and a dead badger… All this and more await you in… Voices for the Cure: A Speculative Fiction Anthology to Benefit the American Diabetes Association
At $9.00 for 100 pages of good fiction, it’s well worth the price.
The preview lets you read about half of Robert J Sawyer’s story, which is a neat detective story set on a space habitat, and you can read Cory Doctorow’s story here
I’ve been wanting to check out the quality of Lulu’s books, and this is the perfect opportunity.
A Crooked Little Story
Called A Crooked Little Vein. Graphic novelist Warren Ellis’s newest piece of work, is a tight fast paced faux-noir detective novel, that moves from one sordid situation to the next, in search of an antique book that is supposed to save the US. Ellis combines Burroughs, Thompson, and Hammett, and gives your mind a smack-down of freakish wonder. The book poses several questions about morality, and when the “underground”, or “counter-culture” stops being “counter” or “under”.
SF is happening to us right now, the world is crazier than we know.
Go out and get it, and then go find everything you can by Ellis: that’s what I ‘m doing.
(Yeah, I know, I’m a little behind on some things, get over it.)
Sometimes…
it takes too much effort to do anything.
I’ll post something later, I promise.
And Jen’s…
My design, and her first tat. She did very well..
The new tat…
Good Advice
From Henry Rollins
Henry Rollins not slowing down any time soon
Q. You seem to be able to stay focused on a wide array of topics and still produce work on a consistent basis. When you’re online, what helps you sift through the all the information on the Internet?
A. I try to stay case-specific. If I’m interviewing a guest (for the IFC show), I get background information and move on. I try to stay up on what’s going on with American and foreign policy. I don’t surf around to see what’s going on; I just don’t have the time. I use as it as a tool and as efficiently as possible. I get what I need and then I get offline and go do something else.
There’s more, about his traveling to Iran–and his traveling in general, about “kids these days”, Black Flag, the music industry, advertising, and how the world seems to be getting smaller as he gets older.
Well…
…I did it. Yes I did. I broke down and bought a new laptop. I got one preinstalled with Ubuntu Linux from System76. They get good reviews (especially for customer service), and the laptops are priced competitively. I narrowed down the choices to this one, and an IBM Thinkpad from Lenovo, and this one won out, because I could get the same options for a little less, and, (the big one) it comes preinstalled with Linux. Less messing around for me to make sure everything works. I’ve been using a Gateway laptop for the last 2.5 years, and installed Ubuntu (starting with 4.10–Warty Warthog) on it with minimal fuss. I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Gateway, since I ‘ve had nothing but trouble with the last four computers I ‘ve bought from them. The Lenovos are really nice (I just bought one for my stepdaughter), but the System 76 seemed a better fit for me at this time.
I’ll be blogging some more about this as things unfold. I’m really hoping this is closer to the Thinkpad than the Gateway in sturdiness: that’s really my biggest concern.